


Hearth and Home

by cmshaw



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-04-15
Updated: 2002-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmshaw/pseuds/cmshaw





	Hearth and Home

It's cold out here. Really cold. But not _too_ cold, somehow; it makes him think about hockey and snow tires, not freezing to death. He's been a lot colder in his life. His partner has had him wrapped him up in more layers of clothes than he wants to think about having to take off when he needs to piss, so he's pretty comfortable, even though the sun is going down already. They're about halfway to Inuvik now, but nobody's rushing, and there should be some good hot food when he heads back down to where the people are.

He kind of likes it out here, though. Nice and quiet.

Benton, when he comes stomping up through the snow to stand beside him, doesn't do a thing to break the quiet, not even when he clears his throat and says, "Beautiful, isn't it."

"Yeah," Ray says. They look around for a while longer, even though it's getting chillier by the minute. "So this is home, huh?" he says eventually.

"Mm," Benton says. "It is, yes." He pushes the hood of his jacket back and turns his face into the wind slightly. "It feels nice."

Rays watches him. "Huh," he says again. "Kind of weird, having just a place feel like home, but then I always knew you were a freak."

Benton tilts his head back toward Ray. "You don't feel at home in Chicago?" he says.

"Sure I do," Ray says, and shrugs, "but it's nothing special."

"A home is very special," Benton says in that solemn way of his, where you know he's joking but he's serious too.

"You got family around here?" Ray asks. His hands are getting cold, even in gloves; he pulls off the gloves and tucks his hands up the sleeves of his jacket.

Benton shrugs. "Cousins in Halifax," he says, like he's not really intending to visit any time soon.

"That's near here?" Ray says.

"No, not at all." Benton swings his arms a little and stares out at the snow.

"So it's just the land." Benton nods and Ray thinks about it, shuffling his feet a little to keep warm. Family he could understand, maybe, but rocks and dirt don't have a lot to do with how he defines _home_. Sure, it's pretty up here. Wide and free and open and all that. And it's cold, that's definitely a defining feature of this place. No doubt about the cold. But there are lots of places that are cold and wild and pretty, or so he figures; why come back here? "What's it like living up here?" he asks.

Benton smiles wryly at him. "Long stretches of boredom, interspersed with sudden bouts of danger and discomfort," he says, but Ray's paying more attention to the way Benton's smiling at him, with the same crinkles around his eyes and faint twist at the corners of his mouth that Ray remembers from Chicago.

"Sounds familiar," he says absently.

He's a fool and he knows it. So it's the same smile when they're just two guys standing mukluk-deep in snow as when they used to be Fraser and Vecchio, Dynamic Duo. So what?

So he's a _fool_ , that's what.

Ray puts his gloves back on and flexes cold fingers; it's a lot of work just to scratch the back of his neck where his hat itches. They really ought to go back down and get some food while it's still hot. Although Benton can probably cook some more up again, so he doesn't actually have to worry.

"So what's it like really?" he says.

Benton pulls his hood back up and looks sideways at Ray around the edge of it. "Adventurous," he says.

"Yeah?" Ray says. "I like adventure."


End file.
